Drive devices with a transmission and, for example, a main engine designed as an internal combustion engine, are generally known in vehicle construction. With such drive devices, the main engine is actively connected with a drive shaft which, on its part, starts the input side of a shifting clutch assigned to the transmission. The output of this shifting clutch is then connected drive-technically with the input shaft of the transmission, whose output acts upon the vehicle wheels being propelled via a differential gear.
As a rule, such transmissions are designed as multi-step transmissions with whose operation it comes to a tractive force interruption with the gear change, which incidentally also is true for the so-called automated multi-step transmissions. From this generally ensues the demand to keep the phases of the tractive force interruption as short as possible in terms of increased driving comfort.
With the gearshift of a synchronized transmission this time has already been shortened through an increase in the operating force as well as an increase of the performance capability of the synchronizer meshes. With unsynchronized transmissions in this regard a corresponding design of a so-called clutch brake has become known.
Since the shifting clutch is opened with synchronized transmissions with shifting operations between the main engine and transmission generally, and with unsynchronized transmissions with an upward gearshift, with the achieved shortening of the tractive force interruption, thus the shortening of the time span for the mechanical gear change, the problem increasingly arises of reducing the currently existing revolution speed difference at the conclusion of the gear change via the shifting clutch without losses in comfort as well as at the same time wear resistant clashing with the clutch and main engine torque.
It would be offered as the path to a solution of this problem, to first begin with the closing procedure of the shifting clutch, when the two revolution speeds, adjacent to the shifting clutch, have converged as far as possible. These measures, however, run contrary to the already achieved shortening of the time for the mechanical gear change.
Against this background, the task, which underlies the invention, is to design a drive device with a transmission, such that the time span for the tractive force interruption with a gear change is further minimized and the breakdown in the tractive force is reduced.